After over a year of downturn, the domestic aviation sector showed a marked improvement last year with the number of passengers carried by Indian airlines growing by almost eight per cent over 2008.
The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines in 2009 was 445.13 lakh against 412.71 lakh in 2008, registering a positive growth of 7.86 per cent, official figures released said.
An analysis of capacity or ASKM (available seat per kilometre) and demand or RPKM (revenue per seat per kilometre) data for 2009 and 2008 indicated that the airlines increased the capacity with effect from July, a month after the demand started rising from June 2009,
indicating better utilisation of aircraft capacity.
In terms of market share, Jet Airways and its wholly- owned subsidiary JetLite bagged the largest pie of the air traffic cake by bagging over one-fourth of the passenger traffic in 2009.
While Jet and JetLite together accounted for 25.4 per cent of the market share last year, they were closely followed by Kingfisher with 23.9 per cent.
Air India got 17.5 per cent, while no-frills carrier IndiGo bagged 13.9 and SpiceJet 12.4.